Prof Morgera contributes to UK Parliament’s inquiry into international biodiversity negotiations

Dec 2020 — Elisa Morgera (University of Strathclyde), was invited to give oral evidence to the UK House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on 22 October 2020 as part of an inquiry into the pressing need to address biodiversity loss and the ongoing international negotiations on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework (see terms of reference for the inquiry here.)

Prof Morgera stressed the importance of addressing the human rights dimensions of international biodiversity negotiations, including in relation to ocean governance and at the intersection of marine biodiversity and climate change (see transcript and video).

In addition, together with One Ocean Hub colleagues Sian Rees (Plymouth University) and Senia Febrica (University of Strathclyde), Prof Morgera submitted a complementary piece of written evidence to expand on:

• the need to integrate the inter-dependencies of human rights and biodiversity;
• the benefits of marine protected areas, the need to recognise Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas, as well as the need to conserve biodiversity beyond marine protected areas;
• the need for partnership-based approaches to fair and equitable benefit-sharing from genetic resources and digital sequence information, including in the marine context; and
• the integration of the nexus between the ocean, climate change, biodiversity and human rights across all relevant international processes.